Many types of medical devices have drugs coated on them prior to their being implanted or inserted into people. Such medical devices include stents, heart implants, and needles, as well as other types of medical devices. Current approaches for coating drugs onto medical devices include dip coating, ultrasonic spray coating, brushing, as well as piezoelectric fluid ejection, among other types of approaches.
All of these approaches, however, are disadvantageous to some degree. Dip coating and ultrasonic spray coating lack precision in both placement and quantity applied. Brushing is tedious, and also lacks precision. Piezoelectric fluid ejection of drugs is usually achieved by using a single piezoelectric fluid-ejection nozzle, which can mean that coating takes a relatively long time, since the entire coating is ejected from a single nozzle.